


Overdue

by EmilieHardie



Series: FBI Agent Sam Winchester [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Gen, Past Abuse, Past Violence, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 09:50:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15883626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmilieHardie/pseuds/EmilieHardie
Summary: Ten years ago, SSA Rossi focused on catching the obvious serial killer in a small town – and missed the other one, and the two sons he inducted into his delusion. Now retired, he's finally tracked down the younger one to Stanford so he can finally apologise.





	Overdue

**Author's Note:**

> So this was meant to be a short fill for the September 2 prompt on the fanfiction subreddit, so start to ease back into fanfic. Except it ended up being seven and a half times as long as the guide length for the prompt. Because I'm apparently incapable of sticking to a word length.

Dave considered will it a point of pride that he barely hesitated before knocking. The cheap plywood of the apartment door, slightly nicer than he'd expect for two college students but not excessively so, bent inwards ever so slightly. Not a good sign about security, given that he hadn't knocked hard.

The door is opened a few moments later by a pretty blonde co-ed. He had never seen her before but there's a friendly expression on her face as she smiles at him, unfazed by a stranger knocking early on a Sunday morning. She would be far too vulnerable to a serial killer, and the very fact that the thought had occurred to him was proof that five years wasn't long enough to put a career like his behind him.

"Can I help you?"

"Hi, I'm looking for Sam Winchester," he said.

“Sure,” She smiled as she turned to call over her shoulder: "Sam."

A moment later a large figure emerged from a side door, possibly to the kitchen. For a moment, Dave didn't recognise him. A decade, at that time of life, could significantly change the way someone looked and they had only met briefly all those years ago. Still, when Sam Winchester came to the door, those large brown eyes, that ridiculously floppy hair and that spectacular bone structure were unmistakable.

Dave had been in law enforcement and conducted far too many difficult conversations to take in breath before starting one, but he did harden his spine slightly. "Mr Winchester, I am –"

"Agent Rossi," Sam Winchester said calmly. Dave didn't know whether to be concerned or impressed. The last time they had seen each other had been a decade before and Sam had been just twelve.

"Good memory.”

Sam shrugged. "It was kind of memorable. It's not every day you get questioned by the FBI." A wry twist of his mouth. “Not even for us.”

There was a wealth of things unsaid in that sentence. Dave didn't blame him, just the opposite. The fact that Sam appeared to have a normal life, a girlfriend who seemed sweet and was watching with no small amount of interest, a place at an Ivy League school… Sam Winchester had fought his way out of the horrors of his childhood, things that would have most adults in therapy to to function adequately – never mind as easily as Sam appeared to. If he wanted to leave things unsaid, Dave figured he had that right.

"No, I imagine not."

For a moment, Dave didn't know what else to say. Luckily, Sam's girlfriend was polite and, based on the gleam in her eyes, curious.

"Would you like to come in?"

"Yes, thank you," Dave said when Sam didn't object.

In short order, he was sinking into a saggy and threadbare couch, a chipped mug of cheap coffee in hand. Sam's girlfriend – Jessica, he had learned as she had ushered him in – had claimed the spot next to him but was still fetching her own coffee and Sam was sitting on a rickety dining chair he had brought over from the kitchen, placidly sipping his own mug.

Silenced by Jessica's admonishment not to start without her, Dave took the opportunity to subtly take stock of Sam. In his memory, the younger Winchester sibling was a normal sized if - it hadn't occurred to Dave until later – with the kind of fitness that would put special forces soldiers to shame. His older brother Dean had been equally fit but had paired it with a more than respectable height even at sixteen.

A decade on, Sam had more than matched his brother and filled the promise of his genetics. The size and muscle mass on him should have been terrifying but was combined with such serene calmness and control of his movements that even Dave – an experienced FBI agent who knew exactly what Sam's childhood was like and what he was capable of – found himself discounting him as a threat.

Once Jessica was seated with her own coffee mug in hand and eyes wide, avidly waiting for what Dave was going to say, he put his own mug down and looks Sam straight in the eye as he delivered an apology ten years overdue: "I'm sorry I didn't catch there was something wrong when I interviewed you ten years ago."

It was simple and to the point, encapsulating the regret that had niggled at the back of Dave's mind for years without getting into anything overly flowery. He wasn't there to try and persuade Sam to forgive him; he was there to deliver an apology that was both sincere and deserved. Whether forgiveness was granted was not Dave's decision to make.

Sam, for his part, continued to sip his coffee calmly even as his girlfriend made a faint sound and leaned even further forward. The only Winchester brother Dave had been able to track down seem to be in no hurry to give a reply, his face remaining serene even as Dave was sure the sharp mind behind those deceptively gentle eyes continue to work at full capacity.

Eventually – though Dave supposed to couldn't possibly have been the hours it felt like – he lowered his mug and gave a thoughtful hum. "It's the anniversary of the investigation soon, huh?"

"Yes," Dave said honestly, "but mostly I've gotten past the busy first few years of retirement. Time to deal with unfinished business."

"Why me?" Sam asked at length. "I'm sure there are plenty of cases where the people you catch have kids. What makes me so special?"

"Because I interviewed you," Dave replied with brutal honesty. "Because you were sitting in front of me for half an hour and I didn't realise there was something very wrong. But mostly because because I didn't catch your dad."

If Dave was expecting Sam to get offended by the implication that he was worthy of revisiting because of a failure on Dave's part rather than his own intrinsic worth – a self-absorption all too common amongst the general population in Dave's unhappy experience – his expectations were once again neatly sidestepped when Sam smiled slightly.

"Ah," he said with a hint of amusement glinting in his eyes, "so it's ego."

"I prefer the term professional pride," Dave quipped back, some of the tension finally easing.

That caused a smile to bloom. "Agent Rossi –"

Dave interrupted and if that in the bud. "I'm retired. David is fine." At the look on Sam's face, he compromised slightly. "Rossi, then."

"Rossi," Sam said with a slight nod of acknowledgement. "We fooled a lot of people for a very long time. While FBI agents who specialise in catching serial killers weren't normal, you did get the killer you were there for. As far as you knew, there weren't any others there for you to catch.”

"I interviewed you for half an hour about the attack at the motel –"

"And I didn't say anything," Sam interrupted. "I mean, I was a kid and it wasn't my fault what dad had taught me. But I still didn't say anything, even though I had doubts about my dad's 'mission'."

Dave's sighed. "I was an FBI agent there investigating a serial killer, and I missed the lead right under my nose on a far more dangerous one, and a lot of people paid the price."

"Then why are you here apologising to me rather than to the relatives of the people we tortured and killed?”

Dave jerked back so sharply that he barely avoided sloshing his coffee over the second-hand couch but he was too busy staring at Sam to pay much attention. Despite having gone for the conversational jugular, the college student was still watching him with only the slightest hint of humour to colour his calm gaze.

Dave knew a challenge when he saw one.

"Because, for all the harm and pain to your father's victims and their friends and family, the people your father hurt the most was you and your brother."

For a moment, everything was still inside the apartment. Ever so slowly, Sam nodded. Dave didn't feel like he had told him something new; he felt as though he had just passed a test. It was a very strange feeling to have with someone less than half his age.

"You can't change the past," Sam said. "You did your job as best you could and I never blamed you for not seeing what was wrong with my dad. Hell, the way you took me seriously about what I saw that night with the other killer... That was the reason I pushed Dean to go to the FBI after we killed dad, rather than going to ground like he wanted."

Years of experience stopped Dave from physically reeling from the revelation, though it made sense. After reading the transcripts of Sam and Dean Winchester's interviews multiple times over the years, Dave had come to see that John Winchester had kept his sons so paranoid about everyone and everything that it was a miracle they were able to leave the house back then – well, cheap motel room, and any rate.

Sam clearly didn't miss Dave's reaction, though. The smile he gave was blinding, almost leaving little spots on Dave's vision. "See? You did good, even if it's not the good you normally do. That you took me seriously and treated me fairly was what convinced Dean that we weren't giving up the rest of our lives by coming clean. If we hadn't done that, I'd still be running... rather than having all this."

His slight way around the cheap student accommodation seem to encompass nothing as much as it did his girlfriend, who smiled softly at him. Before he could stop himself, Dave felt a pang of envy: all his central marriages, no one had ever looked at him with as much love, acceptance and support and Sam and Jessica looked at each other. The feeling was gone in a few seconds as Sam turned back to look at him.

"You can stop blaming yourself."

Something caught in Dave's throat and he had to clear it a couple of times before he could reply. "I have plenty of things to blame myself for. Other times –"

Sam's face softened in sympathy. "I doubt it, but say you're right: this still isn't one of them."

"… Thank you," Dave said, with feeling.

Sam smiled. "Well, there is one way you can thank me," he said, reaching around to grab a book from the small bookshelf behind him. He passed it over.

Evil Never Rests. One of Dave's own.

He looks back up at Sam, who had produced a pen from somewhere, with a wry laugh. “Why would you want to read about killers?” he asks.

He meant it as a wry joke, but Sam considers it seriously for a moment. “To understand now what I couldn't understand then.”

'And find peace,' went unsaid.

Dave signed the book.

Standing, he handed Sam his phone number 'in case you ever need to talk'. None of them pointed out that Sam seemed like he needed to talk far less that Dave did.

It was only as he was almost out the door that a thought occurred to him and he turned back. “Have you considered joining the FBI?”

Sam smiled. “It was good to see you again, Rossi.”

 

“Are you going to call?” Jess asked as she washed up the coffee mugs.

“Eventually,” he replied, not looking up from his Sunday crossword he'd gone right back to, his only real entertainment given their tight budget.

Jess nodded even though he wasn't looking at her. His awareness of his surroundings bordered on the supernatural John Winchester used to believe existed, so he would know anyway. After a few moments of silence, another question occurred to her as she put the last of the mugs on the drainer and turned to face her boyfriend.

“Are you going to tell Dean?”

“When his tour's over,” Sam said, then made a sound of satisfaction and wrote down a word with a flourish that meant he had finished the whole thing. Putting the paper down, he gave her his full attention. “Anything else you want to know?”

Jess considered. When they had first started dating, Sam had been upfront about the fact that his childhood had been nightmarish and they had left it at that. When they had decided to move in together, Sam had felt she needed to know what she was getting into. So he had explained that his father had suffered a break with reality following his wife's death and had roamed the country with his sons, killing the supernatural creatures he believed existed until he day he decided Sam was one of those creatures.

Jess had never asked – then or since – which of the Winchester brothers had killed their dad to save Sam. She neither wanted nor needed to know.

“Why didn't you tell Rossi?” she asked, tilting her head towards the letter that had come the week before, announcing Sam's acceptance to Quantico.

Sam's grin answering was the same one that he usually wore when playing a prank on his brother. “I'll get around to it eventually.”

 

When Sam slipped it casually into a phone call with the retired agent a few weeks later, the cursing would have impressed even Dean.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://emiliehardie-blog.tumblr.com/)!


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